REPUDIATION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXXII, Issue 10481, 19 October 1894, Page 3

REPUDIATION.

TO TEE EDITOR. Sib,— la a recent article you scouted the idea that Now Zealand would ever bo found to repudiate her public liabilities. The present Government have been ia office four years, and there have been four acta of repudiation during that time. The progressive land tax is repudiation, for by it the right cf possession granted by tbe State to the individual has been contracted, and the State has annexed, without compensation, a largo portion of what it sold to and was paid for by the individual. The Land for Settlements Act, the consummation of which I have waited for before writing this letter, is another act of repudiation in the same direction. It goes farther than the graduated land tax, for it takes by force what the State has sold to the individual; not altogether without compensation it is true, but for a very inadequate compensation. Then there is another act of repudiation connected with. the public, trust funds. The Public Trust Office was founded mainly to receive for investment tho trust moneys of widows.and minors, and moneys belonging to persona of small moans that they might obtain the earnings of those moneys ; and what has happened ? Instead of the widows, minors, and other persons, receiving the full earnings of their money, the State has fixed as their portions a low and limited rate of interest, and appropriates the excess on the investments. Then.aa to the Government Life Insurance Department, much of the funds of that office has been gobbled up by tho Government at a low rate of interest, which the State gets the advantage of, and the policy-holders are losers from the funds not being remuneratively invested. These are • all instances of repudiation. As regards the progressive laud tax, that falls on the wealthier classes. That fact, though, does net make it just; only not bo conspicuously unjust. But inasmuch as the graduated land tax and the compulsory taking 0! land react on every one of the 90,000 smaller owners of land by the depreciation of their properties in the same degree as the depreciation of the larger properties, these measures are' scarcely less infamous than Jabez Balfour’s transactions. So, too, are the questionable uses of the insurance funds, which threaten to destroy the principle of mutual profit to tbe policy-holders with which the department was started, and so also is the action with regard to the trust funds. Cases such as these in connection with excessive borrowing throw a doubt on the hon&fides of the colony. We shall not repudiate our foreign obligations if we can avoid it, because it is inexpedient as long as we are borrowers; but there is no moral disinclination. We ate quite dishonest enough to do it. There has been internal repudiation, and if pressure comes expediency will be cast to the winds and there will be repudiation of external liabilities.—l am, &0.,

H. P. GRAY.